Nancy Pelosi thinks Paul Ryan candidacy will make her Speaker again

Paul Ryan

No one knows how to play Medi-scare better than House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. Even before Mitt Romney chose Paul Ryan to be his veep, the former Speaker from San Francisco was using the Ryan budget as the key to her “Drive for 25,” the net number of House seats Democrats need to regain control of the House and make Pelosi House Speaker again.

Until now, that’s been a long shot bid. But GOP strategists worry that Ryan will so unsettle tight House races that if Democrats don’t make 25 this year, they’ll be in spitting distance for 2014. That would make a potential Pelosi retirement all the more unlikely.

Ryan, chair of the House Budget Committee, put the entire Republican House on record voting for his “Roadmap for America’s Future” plan to turn Medicare into a “premium support” program, a pretty name for vouchers. Instead of an open-ended entitlement to see any doctor at any time for anything, Medicare would become a capped coupon that that future seniors could use to buy their own insurance.

Having been Medi-scared by Republicans in the 2010 election cycle (the Pelosi/Obama health care law cut several hundred billion dollars from Medicare Advantage), Pelosi turned the tables. She claims at every opportunity that the Ryan plan would “end Medicare as we know it.” Now she has Ryan at the top of the GOP ticket broadcasting her campaign mantra.

Today her office put out a “memo to interested parties” called, “The Truth Hurts — You Can’t Run Away from Chairman Ryan.” It offers many links, such as one to a Congressional Budget Office estimate showing the Ryan plan could increase costs to seniors by $6,400.